The volume is the fruit of four years of work completed at the University of Oxford (2009–2013) and funded by an Advanced Investigator Grant of the European Research Council. It aims at examining sources that have been overlooked in the study of emotions in ancient Greece, and at expanding the social, geographical and chronological range of inquiry. New methodologies are developed accordingly.

The first part reviews the sources available for the study of emotions. C. Kotsifou, ‘Emotions and Papyri: Insights into the Theatre of Human Experience in Antiquity’, discusses variations in papyrological material; papyri often deal with domestic matters, and so give access to some rarely heard voices. In ‘Moving Stones: the Study of Emotions in Greek Inscriptions’, C. examines strategies used to arouse emotions in inscriptions, interesting for their broad geographical and social range, and their rich emotional language. J. Masséglia, ‘Emotions and Archaeological Sources: a Methodological Introduction’, proposes a three-step approach for the study of emotions in archaeological material: identify the object's emotional communities; study the response the object elicits; relate the analysis to other objects. E. Sanders, ‘Beyond the Usual Suspects: Literary Sources and the Historian of Emotions’, explores neglected literary genres, which unveil emotions beyond the typical Athenian constructs.

Part 2 studies emotions in the context of interactions between humans and gods. In ‘Dream, Narrative, and the Construction of Hope in the “Healing Miracles” of Epidauros’, P. Martzavou describes the healing procedure offered in Asclepius' shrine as an ‘emotional path’: the worshippers are guided from fear of punishment to trust in the god. C., ‘Constructing the Fear of Gods: Epigraphic Evidence from Sanctuaries of Greece and Asia Minor’, examines emotional experiences giving rise to religious beliefs, themselves performed in rituals reinforcing the emotions. Fear of gods was used to guide actions and enforce obedience to norms. I. Salvo, ‘Sweet Revenge: Emotional Factors in “Prayers for Justice”’, studies pleas that victims addressed to gods to redress the harm they had suffered. Expressed publicly, pleas may have been used to ease social tensions and control negative emotions. P. Martzavou, ‘Isis Aretalogies, Initiations, and Emotions’, studies, on the basis of epigraphic, literary and archaeological material, the power of emotions to arouse in initiates a desire for change.

Part 3 turns to emotions in public life. In ‘Emotionality in the Political Culture of the Graeco-Roman East: the Role of Acclamations’, C.T. Kuhn studies the role of acclamations in manipulating collective emotions and reinforcing group identity. C. Kotsifou, ‘A Glimpse into the World of Petitions: Aurelia Artemis and her Orphaned Children’, analyses a third-century c.e. petition, especially in its appeal to pity. J. Masséglia, ‘Make or Break Decisions: the Archaeology of Allegiance in Ephesos’, analyses emotional responses to objects and spaces in regard to their uses – construction, destruction and adaptation. Objects, or their remnants, elicit different emotional responses depending on their contexts and perceptions.

Part 4 considers emotions in interpersonal communications. E. Sanders, ‘“He is a Liar, a Bounder, and a Cad”: the Arousal of Hostile Emotions in Attic Forensic Oratory’ studies ‘verbal stimuli’ that may trigger memories or ‘press cultural buttons’ (p. 363). A deep understanding of a culture's system of reference is necessary to perceive these signals. C. Kotsifou analyses the construction of grief and its gender norms in ‘“Being Unable to Come to You and Lament and Weep with You”: Grief and Condolence Letters on Papyrus’. J. Masséglia, ‘Reasons to Be Cheerful? Conflicting Emotions in the Drunken Old Women of Munich and Rome’, investigates the cultural representations attached to female drunkenness, both in textual and visual material. Which emotions would ancient viewers have perceived in the sculpture, and which ones would they have experienced themselves?

In the introduction, C. addresses, among other issues, the difference between the title of the present volume, and the initial title of the project, ‘The Social and Cultural Construction of Emotions: the Greek Paradigm’. He notes, ‘We do not claim that emotions and feelings are a social and cultural construct but only that their representation and manifestation in the source material … is determined by cultural and social parameters’ (p. 9). In that sense, the expression ‘history of emotions’ can be ‘misleading’ (p. 15), as it is doubtful that ‘emotions as complex neurobiological processes’ vary over time. Therefore, the study of ancient emotions is directed at a better understanding of the sources, not of emotions themselves. These statements somewhat contrast with M. Theodoropoulou's envoi, ‘The Emotion Seeks to Be Expressed: Thoughts from a Linguist's Point of View’. While each culture categorises emotions in its own way, even the physical experience of an emotion, she notes, is subject to cultural constructions. ‘Biology creates a frame’, but ‘each culture fills [it] with its own details’ (p. 437). There is no direct access to the emotion, or even to the biological body, since it is itself constructed by cultures. ‘The word … is the space where the psychological body emerges, investing the bodily feelings with intersubjective meanings’ (p. 460). In this view, emotion cannot be studied ‘naked’ (p. 434); even the physical perception of the emotion is mediated by language and culture – as such, it thus has a history.

This slight variation between the introduction and envoi reveals, it seems to me, two different approaches to emotions, which I would describe in simple terms as privileging either the part of ‘sameness’ or ‘otherness’ of the emotion. As with all human phenomena, emotions in ancient sources can be regarded as at least sharing some characteristics with ours, which makes it possible for us to get a basic understanding of emotions in ancient texts and inscriptions. Emotions can also be approached in their part of ‘otherness’, since they result from constructions that affect even the physical perception we have of them, as Theodoropoulou notes. While a few chapters study emotions in their ‘otherness’ (Kotsifou on grief, or Salvo on revenge), most contributions approach emotions as they share a basic similarity to ours. Martzavou's chapter on Isis' aretalogies is characteristic, as it reconstructs the emotions that epigraphic material must have elicited for its community, based on the emotions that it provokes in the interpreter. Chapters that follow this option, in whole or in part, seem to apply a kind of ‘emotional response criticism’; some do offer detailed and insightful guidelines for such an approach (see for examples Masséglia's contributions). A reflection on the different approaches available to the historian interested in emotions, and on the implications of this methodological choice for the understanding of emotions, would have added to the methodological value of the volume.

Overall, however, the volume excels at expanding the material taken into consideration for the study of emotion and at extending the range of emotions examined, beyond the classical Athenian male upper class. It gives a sense of historical variations in emotional language (Kuhn on acclamations, Kotsifou on papyri), highlights the impact of gender (Kotsifou on condolence letters) and examines the religious and political uses of emotions. Contributions on the study of archaeological material, especially by Masséglia, are eminently valuable in building new methodologies. The volume offers thorough bibliographies and will map out further research in the field. I closed the book with the impression that much is left to explore about emotions in ancient Greece and that research on emotions in history has still much to give us to think about – a sign that the volume has succeeded in its mission.